Template:U Precise/Wiki

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Wiki software

Wiki software allows an organization to have a manual that can be edited by a number of collaborators. Wikipedia is the best known example.

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is the free, open source server software that Wikipedia uses. It is scalable to very large uses. It runs on the LAMP server stack (which uses the MySQL database and is available as an installation option with the (K)ubuntu server), or it can be used with a PostgreSQL database. See these detailed instructions. (Other instructions are also available here.) Install from the repositories:

sudo apt-get install mediawiki

Edit the config file so it recognizes MediaWiki:

sudo nano /etc/mediawiki/apache.conf

Uncomment (remove the #) the line:

Alias /mediawiki /var/lib/mediawiki

Restart apache2:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Run/install MediaWiki by logging into:

http://localhost/mediawiki

You will be prompted for configuration variables to be set. The trickiest is the MySQL user/password. Hopefully you remember your MySQL superuser that you set at the time of LAMP (or MySQL) installation.

Copy your local settings configuration file to /etc/mediawiki (and make a backup of the original):

If you are using a virtual host server, make a symbolic link (named in this example mywiki) from your /usr/share/mediawiki installation folder to your /var/www folder:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/mediawiki /var/www/mywiki

then make sure you have an apache2 virtual hosts configuration file (in /etc/apache2/sites-available) that points to /var/www/mywiki as the DocumentRoot. Make a symbolic link from your virtual host configuration file in /etc/apache2/sites-available to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled to enable it. Restart apache2 after enabling the sites. (Warning: MediaWiki is not secure at installation and can be easily hacked by new users. Do not publish your wiki to the Internet before reading all the instructions and changing the configuration file (LocalSettings.php) so that it is more secure.)
You would then access the database at:

Twiki

Twiki is an open source wiki engine used by many small to medium size companies internally. It has an active development team with multiple plugins. See the website for installation instructions. Install:

sudo apt-get install twiki

TiddlyWiki

TiddlyWiki is an open source personal wiki. It is ideal for creating a list of things to do, note taking, or as a collaboration tool for a small team. It is a single HTML file that can reside on your computer or can even be uploaded to a web server and be used as a simple website. It is developed using a Firefox browser as an interface. Installation instructions are on the website.